


so light em up

by WickedHeadache



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Character Study, Dubious Morality, Gen, I Don't Even Know, I Tried, Leslie-Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25439080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WickedHeadache/pseuds/WickedHeadache
Summary: Apparently, she's doomed to get along better with aliens than she does with her own species. She's resigned herself to that reality at this point.(Leslie Dean's thoughts throughout season two.)
Relationships: Leslie Dean & Karolina Dean
Kudos: 10





	so light em up

**Author's Note:**

> I know the way I tagged this will make it impossible to search for and I'm sorry. Character tags are a pain in the ass.
> 
> So... this is kind of a mess, but I really love this woman and I don't know how character studies are supposed to be like so let's just say I tried and that I don't know how else to tag this.
> 
> I hope you like it :)

The end justifies the means. Leslie has been aware of it since she was a little girl and Jonah told her about the lost Earth and the salvation it needed. Since then, she learned about smiles and how important they are; she learned about the trust they are supposed to inspire. If people trust you, they will hear you, Jonah had informed her once, and her young, fifteen years-old self had taken it to heart. Charisma, she has seen, is quite an effective tool.

Jonah has taught her everything she knows. That now includes that she has to watch her back twice before attempting to make a move. Trust, while useful, is made to deceive, to be broken. Smiles disguise much powerful dangers. She should know. She has used both with the same agenda. She should have expected that the man that taught her that would have done the same. It just never occurred to her that it could be used against her.

He had told her that they would get an infinite source of energy ready to be converted, that he wanted to be a father to Karolina (even though Leslie has her doubts about it. Frank exists for a reason: to cover her mistakes and her sins. After how hard she worked, he wanted to throw it all away). Lies.

She has seen first-hand how little Jonah cares about them all. He's an all-powerful being and sees them humans as insects. It didn't matter, though. All the terrible things that can make her moral compass go off were easily justifiable. 

_It's part of a bigger picture, it's for the greater good, we can save humanity._

Well, at least it used to be justifiable. Now it all seems blurry, far away from the marked lines of love and lies she has implanted into her life. The man she has cheated on her husband with has betrayed her; her — their — daughter is running away, horrified by what Leslie has done; Frank is still an idiot and trying to take over her church. Everything she has accomplished is on the verge of vanishing on thin air.

The only problem with it is she couldn't care less.

Their kids are running away from them, and Pride is set on pushing back and scheme. (They _love_ doing that. Scheming. Leslie was the same, probably still is, but she is just so _tired_.) They are facing two conflicts: they've got to find their children and Jonah is out there being a danger to, not just them, but mankind.

The kids will be fine, they waved it off as if it's nothing. It isn't. They all know it, but Jonah is sorted out as a priority. Stop him and the kids will be safe. Stop him and hell will be over. 

She just stands in the room with the team of billionaires she has leadered for the past seventeen years. She's never felt more like an outsider. And maybe she is. Because it had never felt like hell for her, not until now. Because it had always been a dream, a purpose in life. Because for the first time, she's not a part of the team, but a hostage of her own guilts and unfinished businesses.

So she listens to them and their plan to fix it all. She comes back to an empty home and wonders if Karolina is okay, if she's even alive. She goes to a church that's been taken over, and complains loudly about it. Not because she cares all that much about something she's not sure if it's true anymore, but because she is annoyed as hell.

(Another thing she has learned: when her will to live is lacking, annoyance can make a pretty good reason to subsiste.)

If she's going down, if she's going to be defeated and forgotten, it will be not without a fight.

Then Jonah is gone, and they are celebrating their victory. The monster is gone and it's a relief. Except that this is the monster Leslie has been in love with since she was young and naive. Her heart just feels heavy.

She loved Jonah. Past tense. It turns out, as she comes to find eventually, Jonah showing off his true colors is the best thing that could have ever happened to her. Everything is much clear now, but at the same time it's so confusing that Leslie doesn't know if she's still living in the same world. Is the world still formed by lighter and darker shades of gray? Can her moral compass be fooled now that her mind isn't filled with excuses? 

Funnily enough, she finds out she feels nothing at all. Perhaps relieved to the point she can sense the tiredness taking over her again, deep in her bones.

She ignores things that should not be ignored. Things within herself that are terrifying and simply preposterous, so she pretends it's this insignificant thing that will go away eventually on its own. She pretends it's just the darkness she has for so long played out as light, or maybe it's the _gray_. The gray is scary enough but not so much that she can't admit it's one of those things she does not talk about.

She wants to stay away from the bed of lies she built, she wants to find her daughter, she wants to take back the life she has underestimated so much in the past. She knows Karolina is not going to want to have anything to do with her if she keeps making the wrong choices, and luckily for her, she won't have to.

She's done.

As a matter of fact, she's so done she throws away her father's life's work and her own. She closes the church and sends Frank to hell. She sends everyone to hell. She quits Pride — which she knows is a relief for both parties, neither herself nor them want her there.

She only wants her daughter, and she knows that's not possible for her to have anymore. So she just sits back and enjoys the momentary freedom and peace the world has offered her. There is no more Jonah, no more sacrifices, no more bullshit fed to her father by a power hungry alien. There's no more anything — or anyone.

She should've known that was just the calm before the storm.

“How can you be so selfish?” Frank tells her once.

And Leslie laughs at him, smiles patronizingly, because selfish is just another word for enduring. Selfish is what has kept her alive and what has stopped her so many times from putting herself down to coddle Frank's fragile ego. It's what keeps her from shooting her brains out every morning when she remembers what her life has become.

She does not expect Frank to betray her and send her to the crater, left to be brainwashed. She didn't believe he had it in him. She wonders if it's healthy, feeling angry all the time, the messy knots of betrayal still twisting and tumbling in her stomach even as she keeps them hidden deep inside.

It's not healthy at all, she knows. She feels this darkness swallowing her whole like she never has allowed it to. Then she remembers: there is no light, therefore there can't be dark either. It's all bullshit, even as her heart drops every time she screams and laughs cruelly at the church.

It's all so very gray, and she is so very _lost_ in it. Wandering purposeless in her little cell at the crater. She doesn't let it get to her. At least not until she can finally give Frank the slap that he deserves. At least not until she can see Karolina just one more time. At least not until there's no reasons left for her to fight this hell.

She even makes a to-do list in her head, ever the one to keep things organized. It's short, which leaves her a bit disheartened, but it's something that keeps her mind focused and away from the crap being dumped in her head every day.

“My father never wanted this,” Leslie says, and she believes it. There's nothing she believes more.

She refuses to think of David Ellerh as anything but well-intentioned. Her father would've been on the side of the truth, had always fought for it. Of that, she is certain.

But this _woman_ whose name she doesn't know — Leslie cringes at the mere idea of calling her S4E2R — scoffs at her, letting her know she believes Leslie to be naive. And Leslie thinks it's not this person's place to look at her so patronizingly. She doesn't have any right to talk about her father like she knows him any better than Leslie.

“If he didn't _want_ this, we wouldn't be here in the first place,” the woman says, her smile sympathetic yet borderline condescending (and _oh so familiar_ in a way that gets under her skin). It hurts Leslie more than she cares to admit, because a small part of her, the dark ugly part, thinks S4E2R may be right. “We wouldn't be in the path of Light, every day closer to the Brightness.”

And as she starts another lecture, Leslie rolls her eyes like an exasperated adolescent and zones out the insistent blabbering about the Book that Leslie has spent a life learning and worshipping.

After _that_ particular conversation, Leslie's to-do list looks something like this:

  1. Escape the Crater.
  2. Slap Frank.
  3. Find Karolina.
  4. Throttle S4E2R.



Not necessarily in that order.

She suspects the elder woman thinks Leslie won't be capable of anything in her _condition_ (which Leslie will pointedly ignore until it stops being convenient), as she tells her once, but if anything underestimating Leslie means she'll be keeping her guard down. 

She sneaks out, avoiding the guards, and easily accesses into S4E2R's files. In fact, it's so easy it makes her doubt how outstanding the security of her church actually is. Good thing she doesn't have to worry about that anymore.

“They kept us apart,” she's telling _Susan_ later, her _mother_ , who is right here in front of her and doesn't remember her at all. Leslie's heart breaks a little bit. “But you always did want me, didn't you?”

Her voice sounds too hopeful, too emotional, like she hasn't allowed it to be when mentioning her mother since she was twenty-six years old and her father had just died. But she can't keep it locked in this time. This is her mother, and she _wanted_ her, she never _meant_ to leave her, and Jonah had been lying, like he always did.

Expect maybe she didn't, maybe she hadn't.

She's left screaming after Susan, sobbing alone in a room with white walls that would hurt her eyes were the lights not shut, old heartaches that she had deemed unworthy from making her suffer resurfacing as if they had never left her. They probably hadn't. 

She doesn't see Susan for a long time after that.

She starts to lose track of time, and she wonders if she should've drawn sticks in the walls to count the days. She reminds herself she's not _that_ desperate. 

She kind of is, though. Leslie can feel her sanity slipping through her fingers with each day locked in the Crater, now not even having Susan to spat back at. She guesses she could do that with one of the other nameless robots that has been handling her, but after learning the truth about who Susan is, she knows it won't be the same.

She thinks of her father and her chest hurts. Who had he been, really? He had taken her mother from her when Leslie had needed her the most, and Leslie overthinks until her head starts to ache and she wonders if this is how the kids feel all the time when thinking about them.

(If they remember their existence at all, of course.)

She prefers to believe it's all on Jonah. He had manipulated Leslie, it only made sense that he had done the same with her father. David Ellerh has been her hero, however, has inspired all of her choices for the last twenty years, and Leslie doesn't have any faith on him left to keep it that way.

She's still pissed off, and she makes Frank aware of it when she sees him. The look in his face when she calls him an idiot and tells him she's pregnant is almost as satisfying as punching him in the nose would be. 

She would still slap him, though, if she were in different circumstances. She decides to wait until she's out.

Because she _will_ be out. Nobody could say that she lacked in determination.

“Mom,” Karolina calls her and Leslie had to blink back tears (because _she's here_ and _Mom_ , and her voice echoes in her chest until she's not quite sure if it's real, and _Mom. Mom_. She had forgotten what it was like to be called that. It's warm, she thinks, like the giggles of a little girl getting herself in trouble). Karolina is circling her arms around her and Leslie is pretty sure that she's officially crying, even as she's silent.

She touches Karolina's hair, and her eyes took her in, trying to get used to _her daughter_ existing again.

There's no time for that, however. They have to leave. Susan remembers her now and she's _help_ , and Leslie wishes she could have more of her mother than a hug and a signal to run but Karolina glows in the sky, followers are kneeling and Susan chooses the Church.

She wonders if this is how Karolina has felt all these years when she had been so focused on the Church and Pride. It's not pretty. She ignores it because she's an _adult_ and ignoring is what helps her cope lately. Besides the sight of Frank being locked away and getting what he deserves everything that slap could've been.

But there's no time.

She stays with the kids, which is, truly, bizarre. The place they live in is kind of a dump, although Molly talks about it as if it were a palace, but she's here at last. She thinks Pride would be green with envy. The hopelessness in her heart tells her there's not a lot to be envious of.

She's recently single, pregnant with an alien and, if her new roommates could wish her out of existence, they would without a pause.

“It's too late for us, Mom,” Karolina tells her, eyeing her growing baby bump. “You have to let go and… be a better mother to that baby than you were to me.”

Leslie's heart comes to a halt at that moment, because it sounds definitive, like an ending, and Leslie doesn't think Karolina understands how motherhood works. Or maybe she's just being deliberately cruel. And Leslie _knows_ that it's not unearned, that she has a lot to make up for.

Karolina says that forgiveness is gained, but there's a tone of resignation in her voice that lets her know she doesn't believe Leslie will try.

Leslie avoids the subject after that.

She also dodges any meetings with Alex and pretends she has more interesting things to do than listening to the teens fight and ends up making herself invisible. She'd prefer to avoid any confrontation and still have a roof over her head, thank you very much.

She occupies most of her time around Xavin. She seems to be the only one in the hostel genuinely interested to be around her. So Leslie lets her. Even if she's a little weird. Even if she can shapeshift into anyone — anything. Even if she didn't use to have a mouth. Even if she calls her funny names like the Holy Mother (which is a bit flattering, she will admit)

Xavin is nice, and perhaps mildly intense. She's quiet. Not in an uncomfortable way. She has this serene look on her face, almost emotionless, that gives Leslie instant relief. She's been constantly sensing the tension radiating from everybody. She's a _parent_ , after all. 

They're keeping their mouths shut around Leslie when they clearly have a lot to say, for Karolina's sake. The only thing Xavin has to comment on is the sugar content of the cereal. Leslie is glad.

Apparently, she's doomed to get along better with aliens. She's resigned herself to that reality at this point.

Then it's the evening of that same day but Nico is crying, and Karolina is missing, and _Jonah is back_. Leslie feels her heart in her throat, choking her as she blinks back panicked tears. 

Jonah is _back, back, back._ Karolina is _missing._ She is gone again. Leslie holds herself together, doesn't make it about her when Nico looks like her world is crashing down and the only thing that has been making it work has disappeared.

_It's too late for us, Mom_.

Her heart thumps hard, and she thinks it might explode. 

_How can you be so selfish?_

She hopes it does. It might actually fix the mess in her head. In her womb. In her life.

_Be a better mother to that baby than you were to me._

She goes back to her bedroom that night, hears the crickets outside standing out in the silence of the night. She thinks she catches a murmur in the hallway. Probably the kids are as wide awake as she is. She waits until she hears footsteps, until they're farther and farther away and she can't sense them anymore.

Then, she breaks down.


End file.
